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Post-Fire Salvage Logging Increases Restoration Costs in a Mediterranean Mountain Ecosystem

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Post-Fire Salvage Logging Increases Restoration Costs in a Mediterranean Mountain Ecosystem New Forests DOI 10.1007/s11056-012-9327-7 Post-fire salvage logging increases restoration costs in a Mediterranean mountain ecosystem Alexandro B. Leverkus • Carolina Puerta-Pin˜ero • Jose´ Ramo´n Guzma´n-A´ lvarez • Javier Navarro • Jorge Castro Received: 15 November 2011 / Accepted: 5 April 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract Post-fire salvage logging (i.e. felling and removing burnt trees, often elimi- nating the remaining woody debris) is a practice routinely performed by forest managers worldwide. In Mediterranean-type ecosystems, salvage logging is considered a measure to reduce future reforestation costs, but this assumption remains largely untested. We made a cost analysis of different management schemes, addressing the immediate post-fire burnt- wood management as well as the costs and success of subsequent reforestation efforts. Two experimental 25-ha plots were established in a burnt pine reforestation of SE Spain, in which three replicates of three post-fire treatments were applied: non-intervention (NI), partial cut plus lopping (PCL; felling and lopping off the branches from most of the trees, leaving all biomass in situ), and salvage logging (SL). After 4 years, a mechanised reforestation was undertaken, and seedling mortality was monitored for 2 years. The cost of all management operations was recorded in situ, and the cost of re-planting the dead seedlings was estimated according to the expenses of previous reforestation. Initial cost of wood management was greatest in SL and zero in NI. Reforestation cost was highest in NI and lowest in SL, and seedling-mortality rates proved lowest in PCL (43 % vs. 51 % and 52 % in SL and NI, respectively). Considering all the post-fire management operations, salvage logging did not provide particular economic advantages for forest restoration, and had an overall cost of 3,436 ± 340 €/ha. By contrast, NI and PCL reduced total restoration costs by 50 and 35 %, respectively, and PCL indeed promoted restoration success. We suggest that the full cost of management operations needs to be considered when evalu- ating the economic implications of post-fire salvage logging. A. B. Leverkus (&) Á J. Castro Departamento de Ecologı´a, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain e-mail: [email protected] C. Puerta-Pin˜ero Unit 0948, APO AA, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, 34002-0948 Washington, DC, USA J. R. Guzma´n-A´ lvarez Grupo de Investigacio´n Silvopascicultura, Universidad de Co´rdoba, Co´rdoba, Spain J. Navarro Sierra Nevada National Park, Consejerı´a de Medio Ambiente, Junta de Andalucı´a, Granada, Spain 123 New Forests Keywords Forest economics Á Nurse objects Á Post-fire restoration Á Salvage logging Introduction Fire is a common disturbance in many forests, deeply affecting ecosystems and human societies around the world (FAO 2007; Bowman et al. 2009; Thompson et al. 2009). After fire, human intervention is common in order to restore the forest, as natural regeneration of tree species may be slow or even hampered for different reasons [e.g. seedbed limitations (Mallik et al. 2010), post-fire environmental conditions (Tercero-Bucardo et al. 2007), or seed and seedling predation (Ordo´n˜ez and Retana 2004; Denham 2008; Puerta-Pin˜ero et al. 2010)]. In many cases, the final action to restore the forest is the direct planting of tree seedlings (Savill et al. 1997; Zhang et al. 2008; Ahtikoski et al. 2009; Moreira et al. 2012). Before reforestation is undertaken, other management measures are typically implemented, with post-fire manipulation of the burnt wood particularly common (McIver and Starr 2000; Lindenmayer et al. 2008; Castro et al. 2011). Very often, the logs are cut and removed, and the remaining coarse woody debris (e.g. branches and log remnants) is eliminated by chopping, mastication, or fire (Bautista et al. 2004; Castro et al. 2011). Such operations are called post-fire salvage logging (McIver and Starr 2000; Lindenmayer et al. 2008). Salvage logging is extensively implemented worldwide (McIver and Starr 2000; Lin- denmayer et al. 2008; Castro et al. 2011), with several reasons commonly presented to support such actions. In certain regions the main motivation is economic, as timber may still provide commercial benefits after the fire, hence the term ‘‘salvage logging’’ (sal- vaging part of the capital in the burnt area; McIver and Starr 2000; Lindenmayer et al. 2008). However, in many cases burnt wood is not a profitable resource, e.g. due to small size of the affected timber stand, low quality of the wood, high costs of wood extraction due to landscape features, or regional lack of a timber-production industry. The unprof- itable nature of SL is a common situation in mountain forests of the Mediterranean basin (Bautista et al. 2004; Castro et al. 2011). In such cases, the purposes of salvage logging are mainly silvicultural (McIver and Starr 2000; Castro et al. 2010a, 2011), the preparation of the ground for subsequent reforestation being one of the main reasons (Castro et al. 2009). It is assumed that reforesting the area through direct planting will be less costly and more efficient if the reforestation is conducted in an open (salvaged) area than in a place covered by burnt logs and branches (Bautista et al. 2004). The underlying logic assumes that the economic balance of conducting salvage logging is positive when considering reduced reforestation efforts and costs. The economic balance of conducting salvage logging for reforestation purposes will depend, however, on trade-offs among various factors related to the difficulty of working and operating machinery. For example, the time needed for natural treefall and wood decomposition, or structural characteristics of the stand such as tree size or density, should determine the difficulty of reforestation in unsalvaged areas (Catry et al. 2012), and consequently its cost. Post-fire non-intervention measures may increase the costs of reforestation according to the above-mentioned factors, yet the costs of burnt-wood management would be nil. Moreover, in areas with low accessibility (e.g. remote or roadless areas, or rugged terrain with steep slopes) the removal of burnt logs might not be possible, and hence any reforestation would need to be conducted in the presence of the burnt wood. In summary, less intense post-fire management strategies than salvage logging might raise the costs of future reforestation, but the full economic balance is not clear when 123 New Forests considering the lower initial wood-management costs of these alternatives. In this line, economical motivations for any kind of post-fire management should be based on its economic efficiency considering all the steps of management (Mavsar et al. 2012). However, the economics of post-fire management are still one of the unresolved questions regarding fires (Barbati et al. 2010). In addition to economic issues, post-fire salvage logging may have ecological impli- cations relative to the naturally or artificially established vegetation. For example, the remaining coarse woody debris may act as a nurse structure that provides improved mi- croclimatic conditions (Castro et al. 2011), protection against herbivores or seed predators (Ripple and Larsen 2001; Puerta-Pin˜ero et al. 2010), and enhanced nutrient availability (Brown et al. 2003; Lindenmayer et al. 2008; Maran˜o´n-Jime´nez 2011). These improved conditions could lead to higher plant survival and growth rates in places where salvage logging is not practised (e.g. Donato et al. 2006; Castro et al. 2011), and thus boost the success of restoration efforts, with economic returns. Contrarily, if salvage logging leads to a greater proportion of reforested trees to die, this could reduce the economic benefits of a less costly initial reforestation under this treatment. In this study, we analyse the costs of first conducting three different post-fire wood management treatments and then of reforestation. These treatments included Non-Inter- vention (NI, no action taken), Partial Cut plus Lopping (PCL, an intermediate level of intervention), and Salvage Logging (SL, removal of burnt logs). Reforestation was per- formed in all the treatments, and mortality of the planted trees was monitored for 2 years. The costs of all the actions (Fig. 1) were monitored, and the cost of subsequent re-planting efforts depending on the mortality rates of the planted seedlings was also calculated. We hypothesise that costs and success of reforestation will depend on previous burnt-wood management, and that the overall cost of restoration will derive from the trade-offs among the differential difficulty of management operations under the three treatments. No anal- ogous studies are available explicitly addressing the full cost analysis of different man- agement schemes for post-fire forest restoration. Few studies are available tackling the economics of stand establishment (Ahtikoski et al. 2009), let alone in combination with post-fire wood management. Fig. 1 Conceptual diagram of the steps involved in the post-fire restoration works, with the nomenclature employed throughout the manuscript. ‘‘Burnt-Wood Management’’ was the first step taken after the fire; it involved cutting the burnt trees (in the SL and PCL treatments) as well as the mastication of the remaining coarse woody debris (in SL only); by definition, none of these actions were taken in NI. ‘‘Hole Digging’’ and ‘‘Planting’’ were performed in all replicates of all treatments, and both these steps are what we call ‘‘Reforestation’’. ‘‘Burnt-Wood Management’’ and ‘‘Reforestation’’ are experimental actions, which we called ‘‘Restoration Scenario I’’. ‘‘Seedling Replacement’’ consists of the reposition of dead seedlings, in our case counted after two growing seasons (this step was not carried out in the field, but the cost was still calculated). The sum of the four steps is ‘‘Restoration Scenario II’’. Treatments are Non-Intervention (NI), Partial Cut plus Lopping (PCL), and Salvage Logging (SL) 123 New Forests Methods Study site and experimental design The study site is located in the Sierra Nevada Natural and National Park (SE Spain), where in September 2005 a fire burned 1,300 ha of pine reforestations.
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